Archive for the ‘Battlegrounds’ Category

Would you believe it? I’m playing WoW again. Damned game. So, what am I up to?

For one thing, I’m toying with the Mists of Pandaria beta. Cool so far, but anything other then the new Pandaran areas crash on me.

I’m also playing allot of pvp. Recently I’ve had a good run, with (I believe) my first win in Arathi Basin – which I also happened to film, so I have record – and back-to-back wins in Tol Barad and Wintergrasp. The AB match was one of my best. I was lethal and only died once, and that was from falling off a ledge near the lumber mill to my doom.

I was in Tol Barad the other morning, and with us on defense is wasn’t all that hard. I died three times but we won handily. One of the group called for us all to rush to Wintergrasp, and who am I to say no to that? I love Wintergrasp.

We won that handily, too. There were only about five of us there total but the dumb group leader I was with insisted I had invite privileges (which I didn’t) so I couldn’t group with the rest of the bunch. I died once when I got ganged up on in the fort and another time to a tough Blood Elf pally, but I respawned quickly right nearby so I came back and killed her while she fought an ally.

So, I’m playing WoW now and again. You can also go to Chaos is Gaming and read an article on me introducing a friend of mine to the game. Later!

It’s unfortunate that I don’t have a better picture from my recent Twin Peaks match. I went Holy and holy crap did I have a hell of a time.

I was credited with the third most honorable kills and was a healing beast.I don’t have great gear or skill but for whatever reason I keeping folks ticking throughout the fight. It got to the point where I was the primary target of the Horde. They’d blitz past the DPS and tank to try and kill me. At one point I had over half their team (six total) beating on me in a corner of our base. I didn’t really care since that was six less trying to win the match. I held out for over a minute there before dying. My conclusion? We were up against sucky Horde players. It was as if they died if we so much as sneezed on them. My holy shock was taking sizeable chunks off of their health bars, which was nice. It’s not going to happen very often, but it was nice to see – even just this once.

It’s been PvP Mania lately, I guess. I went to Tol Barad but we lost that in record time so we’re not going to discuss that. Instead, let’s talk about my recent Alterac Valley match. I arrived and buffed up, including a Flask of Draconic Mind. After the match started I noticed something I’d not noticed in prior battles here.

Here you can (sort of) see the Horde passing us on the far side of the valley. It was kind of interesting, the symmetry. When my group arrived on the far side, we cleared out around the Horde’s boss’s building while the rest of our team gobbled up capture sites. Finally we began the assault.

I did my job and we won again. Yeah! Thanks to being on the front lines I accrued the most honorable kills on my faction and we dominated the match.

Later on, my guild hit level 19, so now we’ve got Honorable Mention, which should help me in the battlegrounds. Not a bad night.

The first news from Gav’s recent exploits is that patch 4.2’s new quests and quest hubs are fun. Some are total chaos,

Other then that it’s been PvP for me. I went ret to Twin Peaks and while I died a few times we won, 3-0. That was a nice change.

In contrast, it was a blood bath in Tol Barad, as you can see.

I was obviously a casualty. A repeat casualty. Dammit. We kept getting beat and killed and someone commented that we could really use some heals.

Uh oh. Can it be?

Yup, it’s the rebirth of the holy-s***-adin! I spent over a thousand gold on gear and glyphs, respecced my prot spec, and now I’m ready to heal! First up, this week’s Call to Arms, Alterac Valley.

Did I know what I was doing? Hell no! Did I let that stop me? Hell no!! I wound up 2nd on our team in heals and we won. Yay! The bad part is that over 50% of my heals were done to myself. In the 2nd half of the battle I got caught fighting a never-ending swarm of NPCs and didn’t have much of a chance to heal anyone else. I caught a Tauren warrior out by himself, and with some help brought him down, too. Not a bad start. We’ll see how it holds up to Tol Barad later.

I’m so sick of Arathi Basin. It and Eye of the Storm are my two least favorite PvP battlegrounds. I’d rather wind up in Isle of Conquest, which I also don’t really like these days. I recently hopped into an AB battle for the weekly battleground and had a poor match. I had the third most honorable kills for the Alliance (that modifier is important, more in a minute), but died four times and only got 2 killing blows in under 19 minutes. Whereas I had 16 HKs, over half of the Horde had 50+. The most killing blows on our side was 4, while three of the Horde had more then 10. Part of it is my lack of gear, but the big part is my dearth of skill. I’m not a raider so I use PvP as my aggressive outlet but the Horde on my battlegroup (not my server, so much, but the battlegroup as a whole) are really good. Either that or the Alliance on my battlegroup are really lousy. It’s frustrating.

I don’t do nearly this badly in Tol Barad, nor was Wintergrasp ever this hard. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

The time of darkness is coming to an end. Light will shine on this world once more, as we enter a new age.

Gavelier is back. Alazar lives again.

So, what have I been up to? Well… dying mostly. Or coming darn close. While Thinning the Brood on Tol Barad Peninsula I was routinely set upon by multiple Darkwood Lurkers and occasionally drew the attention of a Darkwood Broodmother. Fun. I didn’t die here though, thanks to desperate key banging and the help of a Draenei shaman once. I tried to clean up a nearby neighborhood and saw a hunter under siege by a number of mobs so I tried to help, but they quickly died, leaving the three angry mobs to be my problem alone. I dove off a nearby ledge to a lower area and only one of the mobs followed. I killed that one as the other two finally made their way down. I killed them too, so again I didn’t die. So why did I say I’ve been dying allot? I’ve lived through every danger so far.

This is why. The Isle of Conquest, my first battleground since restarting my subscription and I got my head handed to me over and over. Every encounter I got in ended with my death. I stayed alive for awhile occasionally, being a tough kill, but a kill I was. I had one killing blow (a lucky shot on a group kill) to 5 deaths. Five deaths may seem too few for the complaining I’m doing, but the Horde overran the game in short order, so it wasn’t a very long match. Dammit.

I also spent time getting my spell rotation down on one of the standard lvl 85 training dummies, doing 5k DPS. It’s a starting point, so we’ll see where I go from here. Off we go!

We take a break from our PTR coverage to discuss what’s going with Gavelier on Live.

I’m not going to open this post with the trite pirate speak, but it is Pirates Day in Azeroth. You can speak to any commoner to get a pirate costume for a short while or speak to Dread Captain DeMeza in Booty Bay to get a 12 hour costume. Make sure you visit DeMeza to get your holiday achievement.

You may notice that I’m going ‘sword and board’ in the above pic, rather then wielding my usual Tyrannical Beheader. That’s obviously because I’d been off playing in a PvP scenario. This time, it was my first excursion into Warsong Gulch. That’s a cozy little battleground, ain’t it? I took my Dread Corsair buff to the battleground (after waiting 9 minutes!) and had a great round. Sure it was mostly because my team was awesome and the horde seemingly gave up towards the end of the match, but I still had a good round.

I also (because we blitzed the hell out of the place) got a couple of achievements: Warsong Expedience and Warsong Perfection. I say the horde gave up at the end because after pitched fighting around the middle of the zone on our first two flag captures, they were nowhere to be seen on our third run. We all just tailed the flag carrier into our base without seeing a single hordie. I never died, which was weird. I got hit hard a few times, but never enough to drop me below 50% health. I credit our healers (a couple of paladins and a priest) and my stocking up on resilience with stuff like my PvP armor and the flask I quaffed. I did crap damage but was in the middle of everything for 19 honorable kills. I was using my Seal of Justice, so that may have contributed to my low damage output (that and I don’t have a decent one-hander) Aw well.

It was a PvP morning for Gav. I joined a random battleground and ended up in Alterac Valley.

It was kind of sad for me because I followed a contingent to attack the Horde leader, and we did – and I died – but the Horde was just a little faster, and we lost. The next battle was Arathi Basin, where I’ve never won.

I want to point out that I went to AV as ret to try out my new axe, which failed miserably. I decided to go prot in AB, which made a huge difference.

I died once early on when I went into battle thinking I had backup (but I didn’t) and another time during a scrum near the lumber mill. Those were my only deaths though. Thanks to good durability, judicious use of my powers and superb healers, I pretty much locked down the farm. People came and left, but I held it down. A couple times I thought I was screwed only to be saved by the sudden appearance of a healer on our side. Thanks, guys! I ended the match with 2 deaths (least of anyone with at more then 1 kill), 5 killing blows (4th on our side) and 71 honorable kills (best on our side). Go Gav!

Oh, and thanks to running those dungeons last night, I got a mammoth reward.

Here you can see what happens whenever I set foot in a scrum in a battleground. I die. Quickly. This time, though, in a quick Alterac Valley match, I somehow got started following a female ret pally named Angelical. We tore through some of the smaller villages on the Horde’s end of the map, slaying NPCs for God knows why. The two of us, followed by a priest for heals, took down a ton of NPCs and elite NPCs, which ultimately nabbed us the top two spots in damage done (her first, myself second). It was kind of relaxing, actually, killing NPCs rather then players. We died twice apiece once the reality of facing actual PvP combat became a factor. In the end, though, we won. For the Alliance!

It was a battleground-filled night for Gav tonight. My first battle was in an already in progress Isle of Conquest match. When I got there, the Alliance was on the verge of losing their keep. At one point I died and wound up rezzing in the Horde keep, which we had just taken. A contingent of Alliance heroes and myself charged into the Horde keep and killed their leader, winning the match. It would be the only bright spot on the night.

My next random BG found me in Arathi Basin. We got our butts kicked to the tune of 1600-346 or so. Ouch. I – along with a number of other players – swore there were more Horde then Alliance players in the match because they had a large number of defenders at each capture point, preventing us from taking anything back. I did cap the Lumber Mill early in the match – my first ever capture, but with 10 honorable kills to 7 deaths, it was a terrible match.

My third (and so far final) match landed me back in the Strand of the Ancients. We got our butts kicked and were unable to drop even a single wall on our attack, while the Horde rolled up to the relic gate almost unimpeded. I did lead us in killing blows and honorable kills, but I only had 3 killing blows and 10 honorable kills, so it was more that our team sucked then me being really good.

Hi, I’m Alphasim . I’ve been playing World of WarCraft for four years now and my main is a level 85 human paladin named Gavelier. Gav features prominently here at Alazar so you'll get to know him and his guild.

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